Klotz, 350 Maine's chief organizer, notes that the NRCM and the Sierra Club are cooperating with his group on the pipeline issue and on other global-warming concerns. (The "350" comes from the group's affiliation with 350.org, the international organization pushing for policies to reduce global-warming atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million.)

Both the NRCM and the Sierra Club are opposed to the East-West Highway and are working to retighten the mining law. This effectively puts them in bed with radical Occupiers. Klotz, for example, received his political baptism with Occupy. For him, in fact, 350 Maine is "an Occupy working group."

The two wings of the movement complement each other. The two biggest groups, the NRCM and the Maine Audubon Society, have money, constant legislative presence, political respect, and realism (speaking of state legislation, Didisheim observes, "We pursue what we believe can pass"). The grass-roots groups' strengths include passion, intense focus, and the ability to bring in new blood.

Maine Audubon is seen among activists as more conservative than the NRCM. But it's opposed to the East-West Highway, and it supports tightening the mining regulations — though for Audubon the highway issue is not a priority, says Jennifer Burns Gray, Audubon's lobbyist. The group has not taken a position on the pipeline. Gray says it focuses on issues affecting wildlife and their habitat.

SOME DIVIDE PERSISTS

Not all divisions between the grass-roots activists and the environmental establishment have disappeared. The single-issue people tend to see the establishment groups as too conservative and too eager to compromise. For instance, while Stop the East-West Corridor is pushing for legislation to make it virtually impossible for state government to cooperate on highway projects with private corporations, the NRCM is only supporting bills to halt the present highway proposal.

It's a class thing, Jim Freeman says: the proper folks in organizations like the NRCM, Maine Audubon, and the Sierra Club "live more in a bubble" and don't mix with ordinary working people.

But the major division on issues among Maine environmental activists belies the class analysis — the development of windmills.

The flashing lights from "industrial wind" can be seen from all the mountains now, laments Jonathan Carter, who heads up the Forest Ecology Network and lives in Lexington, near the Appalachian Trail. He and some other grass-roots environmentalist types criticize the NRCM and Audubon for their support of mountain wind projects.

Both NRCM's Didisheim and Audubon's Gray use the same phrase to express their groups' support for windmills: they should be "appropriately sited." Both organizations have successfully opposed some wind projects, such as the turbines proposed for Redington Mountain, near Carrabassett Valley.

The division on wind power, however, most simply reflects the fact that, as an alternative to fossil fuels that pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, wind generation is popular among many rank-and-file environmentalists and, polls show, the general public — but it is not popular among hikers on Maine's lovely mountain ridges or the folks who live nearby.

Even Occupy organizer Lew Kingsbury, involved in the anti-East-West Highway and anti-mining campaigns, says of windmills, "They're not nuclear power. They're not going to kill anybody."

FROM DEFENSE TO OFFENSE

In spite of the NRCM's position on wind power, Carter says the group "tackles important work," citing its strong stand in the clash several years ago over Plum Creek's plan for Moosehead Lake, the state's largest inland water body.

Looking ahead Lance Tapley's assessment of environmental protection efforts during the 125th Legislature (see "'Holding the Line,'" May 25) gives due credit to some like Senator Tom Saviello, but ignores integral efforts of important others.

Mainers, Occupiers rally in Vermont A boisterous, multi-lingual, angry crowd of about 500 — including a sizeable contingent from Maine — gathered in Burlington, Vermont on Sunday.

Peter Vigue: listen closely In May when I asked Peter Vigue at the County Commissioner's meeting in Dover-Foxcroft about the potential for a tar sands oil pipeline in the proposed East-West Corridor (see "Tar Sands Disaster," by Deirdre Fulton, August 17) he dismissed the question.

SUBVERSIVE SUMMER | June 18, 2014 Prisons, pot festivals, and Orgonon: Here are some different views of summertime Maine — seen through my personal political lens.

LEFT-RIGHT CONVERGENCE - REALLY? | June 06, 2014 “Unstoppable: A Gathering on Left-Right Convergence,” sponsored by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, featured 26 prominent liberal and conservative leaders discussing issues on which they shared positions. One was the minimum wage.

STATE OF POLARIZATION | April 30, 2014 As the campaign season begins, leading the charge on one side is a rural- and northern-Maine-based Trickle-Down Tea Party governor who sees government’s chief role as helping the rich (which he says indirectly helps working people), while he vetoes every bill in sight directly helping the poor and the struggling middle class, including Medicaid expansion, the issue that most occupied the Legislature this year and last.

MICHAEL JAMES SENT BACK TO PRISON | April 16, 2014 The hearing’s topic was whether James’s “antisocial personality disorder” was enough of a mental disease to keep him from being sent to prison.